I first started diamond painting in the winter of 2019, and it’s a hobby that I’m working to revive again in 2022.

I was really excited by this new hobby – I even have a website for my log – but as 2020 came around, and shipping/supplies slowed down due to the pandemic, it quickly became harder to pick up new diamond paintings. This was due to much of stock coming from China at the time.

When folks started staying home more due to COVID, diamond painting also took off as a relaxing hobby to keep busy at home. Stocks were often sold out as new crafters came to learn about diamond painting. But this is also when US stores such as Diamond Art Club and Dreamer Designs started to really flourish with the requests for diamond painting in our areas.

In my case, I was quite busy with diamond painting in 2020, and stocked up on kits with lots of plans for 2021. I even bought myself a completely different crafting desk that I was really proud of at the time.

But then… all of that fell through last year. Moving my painting projects away from my computer desk to the crafting desk ended up meaning that I worked on my projects less. That says a lot about me, I guess.

I started Ready for the Ride before Christmas of 2020 with every intent to finish it over the holidays that year. I’m still working on it in 2022… and that makes me sad.

Once I realized that separating my project from the computer desk had only caused me to work on my diamond painting far less, I moved it back to where it was before. Don’t worry, though. I did move my crafting desk into a place where I needed a desk (replacing an old rickety desk that needed tossing). So it didn’t go to waste.

So, it’s with much happiness that I write that I’ve picked up the project again and I’m finally at a little over halfway point of being done.

Because I only have a little working space (I really need to do something with this), I usually focus on the bottom half of a bigger project like this first. I have a slanted stand that holds up the light pad that I keep under the project so I can better see the symbols. That folds a project of this size in half like so:

To finish the upper half, I do the same thing. I just turn the project upside down. Yeah, that makes the symbols upside down, too, but I’ve never had too much trouble figuring it out as long as the symbols are clearly marked on the project.

So this is my current upside down view of the work area on this project at this point.

I hope to stick with this and get it done because I have so many projects and kits waiting to work on since I really slacked off last year. Not to mention, I’d love to have this one done to put up in my house come Christmas of 2022! I just have to think of how to frame it – this one might require a good frame.